So a funny thing happened while I was writing these articles about Israel. Maybe you heard – a global pandemic broke out and brought all travel to a halt.
As such, it’s been hard to come back to this blog and celebrate exploring the world when it suddenly feels like traveling overseas is something we used to do. Right now, for example, I was supposed to be on a beach in Mexico. That ain’t going to happen anytime soon. This Christmas Lea and I are planning a trip to the south of England. Will we still be able to go? Who knows.
The hospitality industry is one of those that’s been struck hardest in the current crisis. I’m left to wonder how much the places we’ve traveled to in the past are being impacted, and how the many people we’ve met along the way are coping with the current situation.
History tells us that this too will pass, and that months or years from now the world will settle into a new “normal.” It would be foolish, though, to assume that everything will be as it was before. Just as how we travel and take precautions changed after 9/11, so too will the world be a different place once the COVID-19 fires die down.
Anyway, back to the story in progress:
After leaving Jerusalem, we picked up another rental car for our final Israeli expedition: a trip down Highway 40 into the Negev Desert. The Negev is the large, sparsely populated region that takes up the lower half of the country. Why go? To see Israel’s own Grand Canyon – the Makhtesh Ramon (Ramon Crater) – and all the awesome geology that goes with it.
The road to the Ramon Crater goes through Avdat National Park, site of the McDonald’s that is the only place to stop for lunch on the drive. (In 2017, that was $21 US for two scrawny burgers and stringy fries.) Looming over the fast food joint, however, is an ancient, mountain-top Nabatean city that was once the next stop on the spice road after Petra. And wonder of wonders, unlike almost all the other mountain-top ruins we’ve visited, you can actually drive up to this one. (I’m looking at you, Masada.)
The city was founded in the 3rd century BC, lasted until 700 AD, and is still well preserved for a place that no one’s lived in for over a thousand years. Sections of the city show the influence of the original Nabateans as well as the later Roman and Byzantine occupants. Overlooking the desert and the old spice route are the pillars of an ancient Nabatean temple and remains of a slightly less ancient Christian church.
Not long after leaving Avdat we came to Mitzpe Ramon, the town on the edge of Ramon Crater, where Lea witnessed this rocket scientist trying to sit his daughter on the back of a wild Nubian ibex.
Despite the name, Ramon Crater isn’t a crater. Instead, it’s the world’s largest box canyon, formed by erosion over the last five million years. We planned to spend the night in Mitzpe Ramon, but we still had plenty of daylight to burn, so off we went over the edge of the cliff!
Highway 40, which continues all the way south to Eilat, takes a switchback down the north face of the crater and crosses the valley floor, with many convenient pull-offs to see the geologic wonders of the area.
The first we came to was the Carpentry, a mound of unusual black rocks that resembles a giant pile of wood. The rocks are made of sandstone that was superheated by hydrothermal activity and cooled into crystalline shapes.
The next stop on the geology trail was the Painted Rock Park. At various points in the past, magma baked the sandstone of the region into quartzite of a variety of colors, depending on the different minerals in the magma and the temperatures at which the rocks were formed (or so the sign says). This particular area has multi-colored boulders arranged for travelers to view up close, but the differing colors of sandstone can be seen in many places throughout the park. From this pull-off you can see a particularly stunning cross-section of strata that looks like a rainbow in rock.
Saving the best for last, we came to the crater’s Ammonite Wall. This site is a medium-short hike from the road, but it’s definitely worth the trek. Ammonites (and Lea will surely double-check me on this) were marine mollusks that went extinct along with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Here in the park is a place where an undersea mudslide buried an entire colony, and they can now be seen preserved forever in the rock. Ammonites weren’t your run-of-the-mill garden snails either – these suckers were huge.
There’s plenty of natural beauty to stare at in Ramon Crater. If you’re up for biking and backpacking, there are trails galore. However, the temperature had dropped substantially during our two weeks in Israel, so even if we were up for exerting ourselves, the weather wouldn’t have been kind.
We ate Thanksgiving dinner that night in Mitzpe Ramon, then took the last tour of our two week vacation – a star tour of the Negev night sky from Astronomy Israel. Desert skies are ideal for stargazing, especially in places so far from city lights. When we were there in the day, the clouds were still hanging on from the rain system that had recently moved through the country. After dinner, we received the all-clear – the clouds had moved on and the sky was ready. It was also really, really cold, but the tour guide had blankets to spare.
Gratuitous photo gallery of Ramon Crater follows:
On our final day, we took a last look at the crater from the rim, then drove back to Tel Aviv. For as big of a city as it is, there’s not much for a traveler to see there, or at least so it seemed to us. Tel Aviv is a busy metropolis where people actually live and work, and feels like the most modern city in Israel. After all our time spent soaking in the history of Petra, Galilee, Jerusalem, and the Negev, we used our day in Tel Aviv just to walk along the Mediterranean.
And yet, there was still one thing for me to geek out about: Andromeda’s Rock.
Hear me out. Modern Tel Aviv was built on the site of the ancient city of Jaffa (a.k.a. Joppa) – in myth, the home of such figures as Queen Cassiopeia and Princess Andromeda, and the start and end point for the quest of the hero Perseus. The oldest district of the city is still called Jaffa Port. At the end of all the piers and wharves is a series of rocky outcrops that constantly get bashed by the waves. The last of those rocks, according to tradition, is where Andromeda was meant to be sacrificed to the Kraken. According to Hollywood, here’s how it would have looked three thousand years ago, give or take a few embellishments.
We had to be at the airport shortly after 1:00 a.m., but we booked a room at a beachside hotel anyway just to have a place to relax until midnight. Our flight out of Israel landed in Istanbul in the wee hours of the morning, where we wandered around the airport in a daze before climbing on our direct 13-hour return trip to the States. I’m not sure we were aware what day/time/year it was when we finally got home.
And that was it for 2017. Who knows what travel will be like in 2020 going forward? I often sign off by saying that The Escape Hatch will ever be open, but for now I’ll raise a glass of Cuban rum to all of us hunkering down at home.
Stay mindful, stay healthy, stay hopeful! The Escape Hatch will return.
